Big Labor Makes Big Spending Demands on President Obama

The Big Labor full-court press is in full swing ahead of President Barack Obama’s speech next week in which he will roll-out a new jobs plan. What do they want? You guessed it: more government spending (as if an auto industry bailout, Obamacare, and a $780 billion stimulus weren’t enough.)

Yesterday, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka continued beating the drum and calling for President Obama to aggressively push forward with more government spending in order to stimulate the economy, all while abjuring conservatives’ complaints that Washington is spending too much. Trumka wants America to spend $400 billion a year over 10 years on public works projects. The LA Timesreports:

“Who knows what’s politically achievable until we try?” Trumka said. “The president should articulate a solution of the size and scale necessary to solve the problem. We have a jobs crisis. … If you do only what you think the other side and the ‘tea party’ will agree to, then they control the agenda.”

Trumka laid out a six-point jobs plan of his own that goes far beyond what Obama has endorsed to date. His proposal includes rebuilding schools, roads, ports and energy systems; reviving the manufacturing sector and stopping the flow of jobs overseas; preventing layoffs in state and local governments; and stepping up measures to avoid home foreclosures.

Trumka, though, isn’t the only union boss who is in denial about America’s spending crisis. In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club yesterday, UAW president Bob King trotted out the line that “America is not broke!” while calling for higher taxes and more spending. Detroit News editor Nolan Finley writes in The Michigan View blog:

The real problem, the United Auto Workers president says, is not a shortage of resources, but that the country is leaving those resources in private pockets. Higher taxes, King says, will fuel an economic boom, alleviate social misery and bring fairness to our land.

It should be no surprise that America’s labor leaders want higher taxes and higher spending from the Obama Administration. After all, government spending has been their bread and butter. Under the Davis-Bacon Act, for example, federal construction contractors must essentially pay union-inflated wage scales, and as a result many if not most of those construction jobs will go to AFL-CIO members. So as Trumka calls for more government spending, his union will directly benefit–all at the cost of higher debt and fewer jobs elsewhere in the economy. Heritage’s James Sherk explains:

In order to pay for new construction workers, the government takes money from elsewhere in the economy through either taxes or borrowing. Each $1 billion the government spends on construction represents $1 billion less spent in the private sector. Less spending and investment means fewer private sector jobs. Research shows that the jobs lost in the private sector outnumber the jobs funded by government spending. Congress cannot reduce unemployment through public works projects.

While it makes sense for union bosses like Trumka to advocate for more spending to directly benefit their members, it’s coming at the expense of the U.S. economy. Despite President Obama’s massive stimulus, unemployment is at 9.1 percent (and, ironically, union rolls are shrinking). But rather than changing course, Trumka, King, and the like want more of the same from the Obama Administration. We’ll find out next week what the President proposes to deliver.

Join The Discussion

Mr. President it's sad to say you are not the most powerful man in the Free world, you have been payed off and now are beholden to you Big Labor Masters.. Big Labor will fail along with you in 2012.. Thank you for showing America your true colors. A Generation or two will shun your party and Unions as a result of the abuses your parties policies have wroght.

Trumka and his fellow Union leaders (who by the way make about 10X the annual salary of their Union 'brothers) have some huge fallacies. Spending money to build infrastructure is great – assuming you have the money. Taking money from productive members of society to redistribute it to workers who don't create valaue/products/exports is a crazy 'do loop'. It's not sustainable. And I don't care what the borrowing rate is (as Obama keeps saying we can borrow at 2%..). You only create wealth when you create jobs that add value which grows the economy and taking money from pocket A to give it to pocket B does not create wealth. If it did we'd put EVERYONE in the USA on Food-Stamps and unemployment as the Dems say since those programs grow the Economy..

these threats are humanly sickening when America is what she stands for! Check out the constitution and realize the government and their associates dangerous and corrupt.

Big labor makes big spending DEMANDS (economy crisis, preferential treatment) on President Obama? How thoughtful! Then cut "big Labor" pay so the President has "big labor" money to spend on "big labors" demands regarding "big labors" special interests!! reform government to let everyone have socialism at their expense without tax infringement on those that respect America's freedom and personal liberty and rather use their lives to live free from looking to government for any assistance to personal responsibility more but constitutional morality to their oath of duty!

Wow, who knew more taxes would answer everybodies dreams of sleeping in and getting taken care of as if living off err I mean at home. I wonder how unemployed people can afford taxation cause thats eventually where you wind up.

Higher taxes, King says, will fuel an economic boom, alleviate social misery and bring fairness to our land.

Mr Trumka doesn't care about anything except his own political power.
In his own words:
“We’re the last line of defense out there. I mean, I got into the labor movement not because I wanted to negotiate wages. I got into the labor movement because I saw it as a vehicle to do MASSIVE SOCIAL CHANGE to include lots of people. That’s why I got into the labor movement… In our central councils to reach out and start building permanent coalitions with young workers groups, with student groups, with religious groups, anybody that’s a progressive group to bring them in, actually make them part of the structure so that we have representatives on our executive boards now.” ~~~ AFL – CIO Richard Trumka 1-5-11

NO president should ever set himself up, as you did by accepting millions from Big Labor in your desperation to get elected (so much for your campaign promise of NO LOBBYISM in your administraton—just the first of many 'stretches of the truth') as we all know that means they can dictate, and they sure have, however you are to jump through hoops allowing them whatever they want even if it means ie: slowing down the capping off of the horrendous leaking of the oil well disregarding how it killed off sea life & seafood businesses, likely even previous instructions you ere to follow. Most pathetic and shameful, like so much about you and your cronies, experienced only in everything America shuns!

Union leaders have no problem riding the horse known as America until it drops dead. That how they roll. They do it to their own laborers all the time. I suppose the difference being that they bleed employers until their union employees no longer have a place of employment. The results are the same with the exception that there is not enough satisfaction gained from destroying jobs of their union workers, now they want to financially destroy us all. Had enough yet?

If you think things are bad now, Big Labor, just keep trying to rip legally and hard earned profits out of the pockets of businesses and individuals. Because if you succeed in so doing you will find NO jobs and NO business in the US. Who wants to continue to earn profits in a country that will simply confiscate them whenever they feel others might need the money?

How much more STUPID….and un-American can these a..hole union (so called) "leaders" be? More importantly, how STUPID can the remaining union membership be? Absolutley "nuts" I'd say. STUPID, STUPID, STUPID!!! No wonder this country is in trouble. My grandchildren, without exception, as young as they are, have to be considered "brilliant" with one heck of a lot of common sense, something union leadership and membership sorely lack. Sick, absolutley sick. You almost have to feel sorry for all of them. What kind of upbringing did they have? Most of their parents, if living, would paddle their asses and put them to bed until they woke up. Perhaps that needs be done if their parents are living. Surely their grandparents would dis-own them. Tell me the communists aren't alive and well in the so-called "unions"!

We are now spending money to keep a few working. Our money is being spent paving parking lots in State and Federal Parks, where all roads leading to these parks are gravel and/or dirt roads. When you make it up the mountain, alas there is the paved parking lot!!! This is not spending our money wisely, just putting a few to work. Unions are dictating wasteful spending. This must stop!

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